SZA, CtrlThe first major-label full-length from Top Dog Entertainment’s SZA (you may remember her from Rihanna’s “Consideration” and collaborations with Schoolboy Q and Jay Rock) is full of hiccuping beats and glitched-out synths. The presence at its center projects immense strength even (and perhaps especially) when she’s expressing self-doubt, as on the sun-dappled “Drew Barrymore.” SZA has a strong, clear alto that fuels the fire of songs like the stuttering move-along command “Broken Clocks,” the filthy and feisty lady-power manifesto “Doves in the Wind” and the vitriolic kiss-off “Supermodel.” It’s no surprise that she more than holds her own amidst big-name guests like Kendrick Lamar and Travis Scott. Power can come from radical honesty, too. Maura JohnstonHear: Amazon Music Unlimited / Apple Music / Spotify / Tidal

Various Artists, American Epic: The SessionsThe final chapter of Jack White, Robert Redford and T Bone Burnett’s fantastic multi-format journey into Twenties and Thirties American music (which airs on PBS this weekend) convened musicians to do it the old-school way, recording traditional songs and originals using a rebuilt disc-cutting field recorder. Alabama Shakes and Beck kill it alongside Mexican diva Ana Gabriel – who torches Lydia Mendoza’s “Mal Hombre” – and bluesman “Blind Boy” Paxton. Willie Nelson and Merle Haggard, in one of the latter’s last recordings, collapse time. On the deluxe edition, Raphael Saadiq, Stephen Stills and others who didn’t make the film cut join the crowd. It’s ancient music that hasn’t aged a day. Will HermesHear: Amazon Music Unlimited / Apple Music / Spotify / Tidal

Kronos Quartet, Folk SongsString quartet Kronos has always had a knack with folk-rooted music (see Pieces of Africa, Five Tango Sensations and Night Prayers, among others), as they show on this overdue dip into the English and American folk canon. Like the group, the outstanding singers appearing on Folk Songs are masters at balancing soul and technique. Sam Amidon (who has an excellent new album of his own, The Following Mountain) remakes the title track of his LP I See the Sign; Rhiannon Giddens revisits the Irish traditional “Factory Girl”; and English folkie Olivia Chaney (whose collaboration with the Decemberists is due next month) revisits the Planxty signature “You Rambling Boys of Pleasure.” As an appetizer to her forthcoming retrospective box, Natalie Merchant returns to the music that made her pop-rock so earthy, bringing ghostly iridescence to the lover’s suicide tale “A Butcher’s Boy.” Will HermesHear: Amazon Music Unlimited / Apple Music / SoundCloud Go / Spotify / Tidal

Big Thief, CapacityAdrianne Lenker is a romantic folk-rock poet of the first order, and her Brooklyn group’s second set is even prettier and more intense than their debut. It’s a mix of the seductive and the unnerving, with lyrical turns that rarely fail to surprise even on repeated listens – see “Watering,” which uncovers frightening beauty in lines like “my blood was dripping into his mouth.” In a knowing riff on pop’s fantasy safe space, “Shark Smile” is funny, propulsive, queer, dissonant and utterly intoxicating, a gem of rock & roll impressionism about a mythic girl and a heap of cash with a pile-up of highway metaphors. What’s not to love? Will HermesHear: Amazon Music Unlimited / Apple Music / Bandcamp / Spotify

Ala.Ni, You and IA startlingly intimate album that places the smoke-plume voice of this West London-born singer front and center, You and I blends stripped-down bedroom-pop aesthetics with haunting songs that recall mid-20th-Century pop in their sweeping melodicism. Ala.Ni’s deft touch and gorgeously wrought instrument help songs like the mournful “Darkness at Noon” and the wistful “I Remember” float – or, really, hover, the way late-night regrets might. Maura JohnstonHear: Amazon Music Unlimited / Apple Music / Spotify / Tidal